


Oceans & Streams

by therev



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Human!Spock, M/M, Mirrorverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:10:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throughout the currents of time and reality, they always find each other somehow. A collection of stories with a honeymoon theme (sort of), including original series, reboot, mirrorverse, alternate universe(s), and gender-swapped characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. San Francisco

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of schmoop, some explicit sex, some not-so-explicit sex, some sadness, more schmoop. Character death is in Chapter 7 only.
> 
> Title is a The Black Keys [song](https://youtu.be/HKxHZtyRSgo): _My aim it used to be so true; my world had a place in it, darling, just for you._

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first (and the last) chapter is TOS, some time after the five year mission.

EARTH, SAN FRANCISCO

Outside the shuttle window a fog lay over the bay, thinner as the craft lifted until there was grey then blue sky.

"Are you sure we locked everything up?" McCoy asked Spock, sitting next to him.

"The locks are automatic, as you well know, Doctor," Spock said, not even looking up from something on his PADD.

McCoy nodded, thought for a moment. "Did we water the plants?"

"Yes, Leonard. The one plant we own, was watered," Spock answered patiently.

McCoy watched the PADD over Spock's shoulder, watched Spock, his husband now, at last, dark head bent to what was no doubt Starfleet business which could definitely wait one damned week until after their honeymoon.

He cleared his throat. "Are you sure we fed the cat?"

Spock finally looked at him. "We do not have a cat. Unless you are suffering from early onset senility, you are aware of this fact. Therefore, I must surmise that you are trying to gain my undivided attention."

McCoy smiled. "You think?"

Spock nodded, put away his PADD, leaned back in his seat and slid his hand over McCoy's on the armrest. McCoy took it. 

"Just give me one week, Spock," McCoy said, leaning close. "One week of just me and you and then we can go back to business as usual and borrowed time on a starship hurtling toward dangers unknown."

"I have promised you more than one week, Leonard. I have promised you a lifetime."

"Sort of cheating, though, since you really only have to promise my lifetime, not yours."

Spock squeezed his hand, looking far too serious. "That is not the vow I made."

"I know, I'm sorry," McCoy said and leaned in and kissed his nose, his cheek, his lips. 

A shuttle attendant made a polite noise next to them. "Would either of you care for in-flight refreshment?"

"Darlin', I was getting plenty of refreshment until you interrupted," McCoy said.

"The doctor will have a brandy," Spock said.

Later, McCoy asked Spock if they had remembered their raincoats.

"Actually, I believe that we did not."

McCoy laid his head back against Spock's shoulder. "Just as well. It's gotta be a bad luck, borrowing trouble."

"Are you implying that preparing for inclement weather will in fact produce it?"

"That's illogical, I guess, Mr. Spock?" McCoy asked and yawned. He used to hate flying, now it was the surest way to put him to sleep.

"There is some logic to receiving what one expects, especially regarding subjective outcomes, such as satisfaction or dissatisfaction, happiness or unhappiness, since any amount of either might be judged sufficient to prove one's predicted outcome. However, for something as objective as whether or not it is, in fact, raining--"

Spock stopped speaking. McCoy was breathing softly next to him, asleep, head on his shoulder. He turned toward his husband, pressed his nose into McCoy's hair and breathed in the smell of him. He could still reach for his PADD without bothering McCoy but he did not. He closed the shuttle window, turned off the reading light, and laid his head against McCoy's.


	2. New Vulcan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reboot universe.

NEW VULCAN

The room was warm, the air stifling. McCoy fiddled with something he thought might have been climate control. The symbols were nonsense to him but he could hear a near-silent hum, and then cool air, almost a mist, began to hiss quietly from vents in the wall. At least that was something he could handle.

Behind him a door opened and Spock walked in wearing a robe and presumably only that, as McCoy noticed his bare feet and throat and neck, open in a V down to the dark hair on his chest. The robe was tied with the sash he'd worn during the ceremony. McCoy still wore his as well, over his uniform. It had all happened so quickly.

"Hi," McCoy said.

Spock crossed the room to stand before him, face flushed, breathing accelerated. "Hello, Doctor."

McCoy laughed, "I think, Spock, all things considered now, maybe you could call me Leonard, or Len, whichever--"

Spock kissed him, took his face between his hands and pulled him close and kissed him desperately, wantonly, hard.

"Jesus, you're burning up," McCoy said when he was able, though he held Spock close and Spock's mouth was on his throat.

"The fever will pass once the bond is complete." 

Spock punctuated this by pressing his hips into McCoy's so that McCoy felt his hardness.

"Yeah, yeah okay... this is really happening."

Spock paused, eyes fever bright, lips pouty, brows drawn nearly together. "Did you doubt it? Do you regret agreeing to be my bondmate, Doctor?"

"No!" McCoy said quickly. "No way in hell." 

This time it was McCoy who pressed their hips together, kissed Spock so hard and fast that their teeth would bruise lips but the sound Spock made was only maddened pleasure as McCoy pushed the robe aside and palmed the length of Spock's cock, even hotter than the rest of him. 

"I have prepared myself for you," Spock panted in his ear.

"What, no foreplay?" 

"There is no time," Spock said, and then he said something McCoy had never banked on hearing in his life, even if he'd dreamt of it more than once. "I need you, Doctor, please."

"Fuck," McCoy said.

"It would be appreciated," Spock breathed, unfastening McCoy's uniform pants as McCoy pushed him toward the bed.

A half an hour before, they had been Vulcan-equivalent married on a mountaintop on New Vulcan, with Jim and Ambassador Spock and Spock's father watching, both of them sweating, McCoy from the heat, Spock from his blood fever. A half hour before that, he and Spock and Jim had beamed down so that Spock could marry some Vulcan he had never met, a volunteer, of all things, but when the time came McCoy had stepped in and said 'to hell with that', and possibly no one had been more surprised than him when Spock accepted him. Three days before that, Spock had begun acting strangely, erratically, and McCoy, as his physician, had contacted Ambassador Spock and learned that Spock was suffering from some ancient Vulcan sex craze and while it would have been the sort of thing he would have made fun of Jim for, he knew that for Spock it was a threat to his life. 

A week before all of that, on an away mission, McCoy had kissed spock while they were taking water samples after Spock had smiled at something McCoy had said and McCoy hadn't even really thought about it. Spock had only blinked and taken another sample, but, according to Ambassador Spock, that had likely been the start of it, of this, of him and Spock married and about to fuck each other senseless.

Spock lay back on the bed, robe falling open as he pulled McCoy down with him, McCoy's pants only just down around his knees, shirt still on and shoes and all when Spock spread his legs and said again, "Please."

McCoy's dick twitched where it fitted alongside Spock's, and then Spock's hands were there, slick somehow while McCoy was distracted, guiding him before McCoy even had a chance. McCoy slid in easily, a tight, feverish heat, a sigh, a moan, and Spock keening beneath him like he never would have believed, face flushed and panting. Spock's legs wrapped around him as he thrust, nails dug into his back and it couldn't have been a full minute before Spock cried out suddenly, harshly, and came between them, tensing around McCoy's cock as McCoy leaned back onto his knees and gripped Spock's hips, pulling, pushing, and cried Spock's name as he came and, to his surprise, Spock came again, mouth open in a wide 'o', cheeks pink and hair wild, watching McCoy with astonishment. 

McCoy collapsed, rolled over to lay next to Spock and together they lay breathing and sweating and cooling, only the sound of breath and the hum of the ventilation system. He looked over and Spock was already watching him. McCoy smiled, laughed a little. Spock smiled as well, but his calm facade was already returning, even if his very apparent erection was proof against it.

Spock reached out his hand across the sheets. McCoy took it.

"You're still hot," McCoy said and kicked off his boots and pants and rolled over to kiss Spock's forehead, damp with sweat and mottled green-pink.

"It is no longer urgent," Spock said, brown eyes soft, not crazed but full of affection, which was almost as alarming. 

McCoy smiled, pulled his shirt off over his head then reached down to fondle Spock's erection and Spock sighed with all the dignity of a horny Vulcan. "You sure about that?"

"My life and sanity are not threatened," Spock said, swallowed thickly, looking up. "However, the need remains."

McCoy leaned down and kissed him slowly, took his time like he'd wanted to from the start, kissed his throat, nibbled at greenish nipples, tasted Spock's come, cold on his belly and lower. "Technically it's no longer foreplay, but," he said, then filled his mouth and Spock sighed softly, hands fisting in McCoy's hair. 

Later, as they lay together, both entirely naked at last, Spock's body cool once again, voice calm and as flat as ever, Spock asked if McCoy had done it to save his life.

"Of course," McCoy said, "but not only that, surely you know that." 

Spock rolled over, facing him, eyes so gentle that close up. He reached out and touched McCoy's face, the now-familiar caress of thought and mind.

Spock said, "Yes, I know."

McCoy smiled. "Then why ask a question you already know the answer to?"

"To hear it aloud," Spock said.

"Are you trying to get me to say 'I love you', you big, green-blooded sap?"

McCoy was teasing but Spock didn't smile. "Love is not something which is controlled and therefore lacks intention. I would prefer to hear that you choose me, Leonard."

McCoy reached out, smoothed out one dark brow as Spock watched this motion curiously, then touched his ear, tugged on the lobe. 

"Yeah, I choose you, course I do. You think I marry every Vulcan with the sniffles?"

Spock didn't smile but his eyes did.

"What about you?" McCoy said.

"I also am not in the habit of marrying ailing Vulcans."

McCoy lifted himself up and over, pushed Spock back to hover over him, looking down into those dark eyes in the dim, yellowish glow of the room. 

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

He leaned down and kissed Spock gently, almost chastely, then pulled back and waited. Spock watched him for a while, eyes dancing in the light. After a long time he said, "I love you, Leonard."

McCoy smirked. "Tell me something I don't know."


	3. Georgia, 2015

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern day AU, reboot characters.

EARTH, GEORGIA, 2015

Spock's shoes tapped along the shiny tiles of the hospital floor. He looked down at them, black and just as shiny as the floor, and a bit slippery. In a bag he carried a pair of tennis shoes, not his, but now that he thought of it, perhaps he should have changed his as well, and in a neat, white box he carried a slice of cake. In the elevator the doors were shiny, too, reflective stainless and in them he saw a man in a tuxedo, a man on his wedding day. He straightened his bowtie.

At the nurse's station all of the nurses cooed over him or wolf-whistled and congratulated him and the doctor and a few he knew best kissed his cheek. Someone called for Leonard and said that he was on his way.

Twenty minutes later he heard a similar clacking on the tiles and Leonard came breezing down the hallway, shining black shoes and black slacks beneath scrubs and a look like an apology and gratefulness and relief on his face. 

"Hey," he said when Spock held out the bag and the cake. "C'mere," he said when Spock didn't respond and pulled Spock by the hand into an empty patient's room and closed the door behind him.

"I know you're pissed," Leonard said.

"I'm not pissed."

"You're not happy."

"That's not the same thing. Anyway, I understand."

Leonard stepped closer, took the shoes and the cake from him and set them aside. 

"You look really good in that suit," he said, and ran his hands over Spock's shoulders, down his arms to take his hands, to pull him close, to kiss his lips, his throat.

"So did you." Spock said, hands in Leonard's hair.

"I can't believe you married me."

"I can't believe you ran out of the reception to deliver a baby."

"See, I knew you were pissed!" Leonard said and backed up to look at Spock but Spock was smiling and Leonard kissed him crookedly, messily. 

"You'll make it up to me."

"I will."

"Maybe Mrs. Whatsherface can name her kid after me."

Leonard laughed against his throat, swaying, holding him, hands sliding beneath Spock's coat, warm on his back and Spock knew he was just imagining that he could feel the ring on Leonard's hand. 

"What, Spock? Or Harold?"

Spock groaned. "I should never have told you my first name."

"You think I'm gonna marry some guy with just one name, like Madonna?" Leonard asked and Spock was about to say that he knew he would when Leonard's name was called over the intercom system and he apologized and said it would be soon, very soon, that he'd see him at home and tomorrow they'd be on a plane to Hawaii and too far to turn back no matter who was having a baby, premature or not, and kissed him, and again, and nearly walked out without changing his shoes. He forgot the cake and Spock left it at the nurse's station.

At home, five hours later, Spock fell asleep on the sofa. Leonard found him there and woke him with a gentle shake and they gathered up the papers Spock had been grading and moved them aside and Leonard lay down on the sofa, his head in Spock's lap, looking up.

"Sorry it took so long."

"Everything go okay?"

"Little girl. Gave us a scare but she's stable. I didn't suggest either the name Harold or Spock, or even Leonard, for that matter."

"Lucky her," Spock said and combed his fingers through Leonard's hair as Leonard closed his eyes in the dim, yellow lamplight.

"Lucky me," Leonard said and smiled sleepily with that charming Georgia farm boy grin that Spock never could resist. 

"Are you hungry?"

"Starving," Leonard said, but didn't move or even open his eyes.

"There's cake. A lot of cake."

Leonard groaned and scrubbed at his face, looked up at Spock with red eyes. "Oh god, I'm already a terrible husband."

"Well I knew you would be, that's why I married you."

"Your mom must hate me, all that trouble she went to, all those old money Atlanta socialites sipping sherry."

"She doesn't hate you. She's called twice to check on you."

"To check on _you_ ," Leonard corrected.

"Both of us," Spock clarified.

"You and your hayseed husband from Macon. They probably think I went cow tipping."

"I told them you just stepped out for some Marlboros and a sixpack."

"You would, you traitor."

Spock was laughing and Leonard was smiling up and it took some effort but one leaned up and the other down and they kissed like that until Leonard sat up and pulled Spock from behind the neck and kissed him hard, then got off the couch and onto his knees between Spock's legs and Spock asked with a smile if Leonard still wanted cake.

"Maybe later," Leonard said.


	4. Vulcan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TOS universe, genderswap of both characters.

VULCAN

"Do you require assistance, Doctor?" T'Spock asked, her dark eyes even darker with the sun bright behind her. 

Dr. Lenore McCoy pulled herself up onto the next outcropping, huffing when she got there, then smiled with sweaty satisfaction. "No thank you, Commander, I'm capable."

T'Spock raised one brow but turned and headed up the trail. She spoke over her shoulder. 

"The Vulcan Rite of Pairing is not a test of one spouse alone, but a test of the two together. You will not be judged on your ability to climb the mountain, in fact you will not be judged at all. It is the state of the bond when we reach the other side that matters."

Lenore took out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat off the back of her neck, her forehead, from between her breasts.

"Is this all just made up, T'Spock? It sounds made up."

"Vulcans do not lie, Lenore."

"Yeah but you're half human," Lenore said and fanned herself.

T'Spock grinned over her shoulder. "There is shade ahead. We should rest."

They settled under a huge, flat stone that looked to be precariously balanced on another, smaller stone, but T'Spock assured Lenore that it had been that way for centuries. They spread out a blanket which Lenore had packed and drank from a canteen and ate small, hard fruits, the name of which Lenore could actually pronounce but only if she tried very hard and didn't mind feeling like an idiot if she got it wrong anyway, which she never did.

T'Spock took the cloth down from off of her head, her dark hair long and shining where it fell over her shoulder. Lenore removed her own hat and they leaned against the rock, shoulder to shoulder.

"So are we supposed to reveal all of our secrets?" Lenore asked.

"Are there any you would like to share?"

Lenore shrugged. "Not really, I just wondered if that was the deal."

"It could be."

"See I knew this was all made up!"

T'Spock cut her eyes sideways at Lenore but there was a smirk there at the corner of her mouth and Lenore kissed it.

After a moment Lenore said, "I always thought you'd end up with Jim," sort of off-handded, eating one of the sweet fruits. "I mean I'm glad you didn't but you probably know everyone assumed."

"I was aware of the gossip. I did not think that, as a physician, you would pay any attention to the scuttlebutt of Starfleet."

Lenore stretched her legs out, crossed her feet at the ankles. "Are you kidding? Doctors are like the hairdressers of starships. We hear everything, and the difference is we can verify a lot of it because we administer the antibiotics." She laughed at herself and T'Spock shook her head. "Anyway, it wasn't just rumors, it was how he talked about you. How you look at him."

A hot breeze blew through, blowing T'Spock's hair with it so that it floated like a dark cloud around her face. "He is the captain. I look at him with respect."

"And admiration and affection... don't tell me it's not true."

T'Spock raised a brow but did not argue, tucked a few wild strands behind her perfect, pointed ear.

"Are you jealous, Lenore?"

Lenore shrugged, poured some water onto her scarf and dabbed it at her throat, her chest. "I'm observant," she said. "Part of the job description."

T'Spock watched her, no longer eating. "I once thought you were involved with the Captain as well."

"Yeah, well, not for a long time."

Another wind blew through, this one hotter, or it was just T'Spock's glare, Lenore wasn't sure.

"You and the Captain were intimate?"

"Jim never told you?"

"Under what circumstances would the Captain divulge such--"

Lenore waved the response away. "You're right, I know. Stupid question." She drank from the canteen, snuck a glance at T'Spock and T'Spock was already watching her. "Does that change anything for you?" she asked at last, not sure if she really wanted to know the answer.

T'Spock sat straight and still, composed as always, but her eyes were like fire, twin Vulcan suns beaming down on Lenore. After a moment she nodded.

Lenore felt her temper rise, her heart began to pound even as she thought it would break. But before she could start shouting or cursing, T'Spock leaned forward and caught her in a kiss, pushed her back against the blanket, spilling fruit and water.

"It changes the way that I see the Captain," T'Spock said against Lenore's throat, near her ear where Lenore was ticklish and she squirmed beneath T'Spock, against the knee between her legs and the hand on her breast.

"How's that?" she asked, even though she didn't really care.

"I must now see him as a competitor for your affection."

"Never in a million years," Lenore said and sighed.

"That's not long enough."

Lenore laughed and held T'Spock's face so that she could kiss her and T'Spock tasted like sweet, green fruit and clean water and just slightly coppery. 

"Are you jealous, T'Spock?" Lenore asked, smiling.

"Yes," T'Spock said, face flushed.

"Even though you know better?" Lenore said and tried to send all the love and loyalty that she felt through the link they had shared for months now.

T'Spock closed her eyes, sighing at the pleasure she felt whenever Lenore caressed the mental bond, then slid a hand down to palm Lenore through her pants and Lenore moaned softly. 

"I am not jealous of what he may take from me," T'Spock said, "but of what he had before me, that he might have kissed you some place I have yet to."

"That would be impossible," Lenore said, laughing and then panting as long, slim fingers slid past the waistband of her pants.

With a voice dark and deep with lust, T'Spock said, "I shall ensure that it is so."

After a while they set off again, the sun lower and at their backs and this time when the ground grew rocky and T'Spock reached out her hand, Lenore took it with thanks. By the evening they reached a valley, rolling flat and easy, sparsely grassed with sweet-smelling flowers and not far out ahead, the city where they would rest for the next five nights. T'Spock said this was meant to represent a successful bond pairing.

"How so? Would the scenery have changed? This is sounding even more made up."

T'Spock smiled. "The landscape does not change, of course, but the distance would seem greater, the sun hotter, the day longer." She reached out and Lenore took her hand.

"It hasn't been long enough," Lenore said, feeling especially wistful. Sometimes T'Spock did that to her.

"We could camp out on the mountain, if you wish."

Lenore grimaced. "Let's not get carried away."


	5. Wrigley's Pleasure Planet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slight AU (Bones is not in Starfleet...yet?), reboot characters.

WRIGLEY'S PLEASURE PLANET, 23rd CENTURY

Spock woke in a cold room under warm blankets with a terrible headache, too terrible to open his eyes yet. He was not certain what room, definitely not his quarters (the temperature was wrong as well as the smell), definitely not a starship though there was the hum of forced air. He was not even certain of the time, which was most unusual.

There was a source of heat at his back and he burrowed back into it in his still sleepy, still bewildered state. It gave a little to the pressure, much like flesh. It groaned, then moved.

Spock opened his eyes. 

The body shifted to fit its front to his back and he felt an erection pressed against his lower back and an arm slid over his waist, but the man in his bed (or, technically, Spock was in his) didn't speak and after a moment the even breathing resumed to sleep normal.

Immediately across from Spock was a window and though the curtains were drawn he could see light through a slim opening, too bright and he blinked and blinked and when they adjusted he read a sign that floated over a tall building, still flashing neon in the daytime. 'Planet Vegas Hotel & Casino', it read, and he remembered.

He remembered most of it anyway.

He shifted slowly, turned, trying to free himself from the other body when it moved again and groaned and said, "Fuck, my head," and rolled away from him.

Spock sat up, his head spun a little to do so but he was Vulcan and he could suppress the pain and dizziness. Usually. He sat there for a little while anyway, the noise of sheets on skin behind him. 

"Who are you?" the man asked in Standard with a Terran accent, voice thick and raspy.

"No one of importance," Spock said and stood at last to look for his clothing; the room was quite cold.

"You're that Vulcan I was hitting on," the Terran said, and then, "Jesus, I can't believe..."

Whatever he could not believe he did not say and Spock still had not looked at him. He found his underpants, his shirt, and put them on as he found them.

"Spock?" the Terran said, but Spock was in the bathroom where he found one sock and one boot and before he could answer the Terran mumbled, "No, that sounds like a made up name."

Spock re-entered the room and found the Terran sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard watching him.

"I am Spock," Spock said, "and your name, as I recall, is Len, a name equally as likely to be fictional."

The Terran smiled crookedly, with one eye squinting from the headache, his bare chest was lightly hairy and his shoulders were broad and his hair was a mess.

"You remembered. Short for Leonard, actually."

Spock nodded, then knelt to look under the bed where he found his pants at last. He stood and slipped them on in the half light of the curtained room with the Terran, Leonard, watching him. 

"You're gorgeous," Leonard said, smiling, watching Spock button his pants a little too closely, then, with an entirely different tone and no smile, he said, "You're married?"

"I am not," Spock said, "however that is none of your concern."

"It's my goddamn concern when you sleep with me, ow!" Leonard punctuated this by holding his head, which must have ached when he raised his voice.

"I am not married, Leonard," Spock said and sat on the bed to pull on his one sock and that's when he noticed the ring. It was on his left hand and it was plain and gold.

He looked at it, bewildered. Vulcans did not even exchange wedding bands.

"Hey, Spock," Leonard said behind him, softly, like a question, and when Spock turned to look at him Leonard was holding up his own hand with a matching ring on the appropriate finger, next to a larger one on his pinky.

Spock stared. "Fascinating."

"Did we get married?" Leonard asked, eyes shut tightly as if the answer or the light might hurt.

Spock touched his own ring, twisting it. It was quite tight and not real gold. It was already turning his finger a darker shade of green.

"That is a distinct possibility, Leonard."

Leonard groaned and cracked open one eye to regard him. "How could you let this happen?"

"In what scenario do you imagine yourself free of responsibility? A phaser held to your head, perhaps?"

"No, but you're Vulcan, you're supposed to be more..." Leonard made a non-specific but rather involved gesture, "Vulcan! Not just marry some guy you met in a casino."

Spock felt his face grow hot. "Perhaps you should not have allowed yourself to become so intoxicated."

"It wasn't exactly intentional. There was this conference and my friends kept buying me drinks. I sort of won this award..."

"Congratulations,' Spock said flatly and stood to look for his other shoe and sock and communicator. He didn't care what they were supposed to be to each other; he had a ship to get back to.

Leonard watched him. "Well what about you? I thought Vulcans weren't affected by alcohol."

Under a chair, Spock found his phaser. He hadn't beamed down with it; they weren't even allowed planetside. He had no recollection of how it ended up in this room. He tucked it into into his waistband where Leonard would not notice it.

"Vulcans are not affected by alcohol, however, refined sugars have a similar effect." The entire truth was that, as half human, Spock was in fact affected by alcohol as well, but this man had no need for details of his heritage. "And my friend--my Captain--was also purchasing my beverages, as I was recently promoted."

"Congratulations," Leonard said sarcastically.

"Thank you," Spock said and Leonard rolled his eyes.

In the top of the closet, Spock found his other boot. He slid it on. The lost sock was negligible. 

"Have you seen my communicator?"

Leonard shrugged. "Is that important?"

Spock raised a brow, sat on the bed next to Leonard. "It is not unimportant."

"Guess you should stay 'til you find it, then," Leonard said, smirking, and leaned forward to smoothe Spock's hair.

"Do you find this amusing?"

"I don't know... I still think you're gorgeous. I could have done worse than marry a... what did you get promoted to?"

"Commander."

"Oh, that sounds impressive."

Spock narrowed his eyes. "As a Vulcan, your human ceremonies mean nothing to me."

"Tell that to the Federation. This place may be a pleasure planet but the paperwork is real."

"We shall be divorced immediately," Spock said dismissively.

"Before the honeymoon?" Leonard asked and smiled, not quite but almost touching Spock with his hand stretched toward him on the sheets. In the low light his eyes were a peculiar brown that was also green and after a long moment while Spock watched him Leonard's smile faded and he withdrew his hand. There was a noise in the hallway, voices, other people up and about and living their lives while Spock was sitting in a room with a stranger he'd accidentally married.

After another long moment Leonard reached beneath the sheets and pulled out Spock's communicator.

"Here," he said simply.

Spock took it and their fingers brushed, warm and electric and Spock had a sudden memory of the night before, of strong hands on his hips, on his back, of lips at his throat, the inside of his thigh. Now those lips were frowning, pouty and pink.

"Thank you," Spock said, and stood.

He headed toward the door and Leonard scrambled out of bed behind him, holding his head. "Hey wait, can't I, I mean, couldn't I at least take you to dinner, all things considered?"

Spock looked him over.

"You are nude, Leonard." 

"Well I don't mean now, here..." Leonard said and crossed the room, picked up a coat and fished out a card and brought it back to Spock, completely unselfconscious in his state of undress. 

"You're a surgeon?" Spock asked after he'd read the card. 

"Don't sound so surprised," Leonard said.

Spock smirked. "I suppose I could have done worse than marry a surgeon."

Leonard laughed and winced when it hurt his head, then regarded Spock with surprising sincerity.

"Look, I don't... I've never done this before. I mean, I've drunk enough to regret it the next day but not for a long time and I was never married when I woke up. I'm not saying it was a good idea or we should stay married-- I was pretty terrible at my last marriage-- but even if there's not something here... maybe there's not... nothing?"

Spock stared. "There are many ways in which that argument is illogical," he said, then leaned forward and kissed Leonard lightly beside his mouth and opened the door.

"Is that a yes?" Leonard said behind him, standing in the door naked as a couple of young Andorian females passed by giggling and Spock tucked the card safely into his pocket.


	6. ISS Enterprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TOS Mirrorverse

ISS ENTERPRISE, DEEP SPACE

McCoy's hand slid over the surface of his desk as he tried to grip it, slippery with sweat or lubrication or something else. He moaned and Spock thrust deeper, the scratch of his beard on McCoy's shoulder, hands tight on his hips, pulling at him as Spock pushed inside. McCoy keened, wanted to touch himself and started to do so.

"Do not, Doctor," Spock said in his ear, calm but breathy and with the mental control Spock had over him the verbal command wasn't even necessary, Spock just liked being bossy.

"Then stop fooling around a fuck me already, oh!"

"I am endeavoring to do so. Please attempt a modicum of restraint, Doctor," Spock said but he was gripping McCoy's hips so hard they would bruise and there was the slap of flesh again and again until at last he touched McCoy, wrapped those long Vulcan fingers around his cock and McCoy leaned his head back on Spock's shoulder behind him and shuddered and sighed and came over the desk, his PADD, some unlucky ensign's medical records. Then Spock tensed, bit McCoy's neck and silently came inside him. 

They stood that way, McCoy boneless against Spock as Spock held him, kissed and licked the place on his neck where he'd bitten him and after a moment he slipped out of McCoy and McCoy twisted his head so that Spock could kiss his lips, then turned his body so that Spock could hold him that way.

"Was that sufficient, Doctor?" Spock asked.

McCoy smirked. "I've had better."

Spock kissed his brow, the scar across his nose.

"Any attempts at improvement will have to wait until the uprising is entirely quelled," Spock said.

McCoy frowned, wrapped his arms around Spock as if he intended not to let go. 

"Let 'em all hang," he said. 

"Including your friend, the Captain?"

"Especially him. How do you think I got this scar?"

"In that case you will have to release me so that I can dress."

McCoy huffed but pushed Spock away, crossed the room to clean himself up. "I guess that's what I get for marrying a starship commander. Mutinies every day. Med bay full of cut up redshirts. You bring Jim to me, I'll settle this without all the carnage."

"Will you argue him to death, Doctor?" Spock asked as he dressed. 

McCoy began pulling on a fresh uniform. "This might surprise you, but I can take life more efficiently than you, Commander."

"Your efficiency I do not doubt, however, you could no more take a life than I could make one alchemically." He stepped close to McCoy, touched his face. "You are not a killer, or a fighter. That is for men like myself and the Captain and Mr. Sulu."

"And what are men like me for?" McCoy asked, slapping Spock's hand away as his brow furrowed angrily.

Spock blinked slowly, unperturbed by McCoy's outburst, and continued tying the sash around his waist. "For love, for passion, for... fucking, as you are fond of phrasing it."

McCoy tried to continue to glare but a smile played around his mouth, twitching in the corners, his blue eyes dancing playfully. That was how Spock liked him best. Happily angry.

"I shall return, Leonard," Spock said and leaned in and waited for McCoy to kiss him. McCoy hesitated, tried to look put upon, but did so.

"Don't come back all banged up and expect me to put you back together," McCoy called after him.

"I return your affection, Doctor," Spock said, just to rile him.


	7. Unspecified Planet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate universe. TOS characters. Character death.

UNSPECIFIED PLANET

Snow fell slowly, drifting like confetti onto the tall trees that might have been evergreens if they had been on Earth but the foliage was red where it showed from beneath the snow, black at night.

It was night when Spock and McCoy sat together in their foxhole beneath a tarp hanging heavy with snowfall. It had been night for a long time already. The sound of mortars and phasers had slowed, faded with the setting sun, tanks and hovercraft still and quiet in the dark. 

Under their tarp, McCoy and lieutenant Hooper shared a small flask of brandy by lamplight, passing it back and forth silently. They used to talk and joke or play poker but the cards had been lost and their humor, too. Spock sat next to McCoy, hip to hip in the dirt with a small light shining over a paper map he had been marking and revising since two days prior when their Captain had stepped on a mine and Spock had been promoted. Doctor McCoy had assured him that they would be able to save the leg above the knee.

A flash cut through the black at the uncovered half of their foxhole, lighting the falling snow red and then the ground shook and dirt sprayed over the tarp in the resounding boom. Rifle fire followed it, just two short claps, then all was silent. McCoy craned his neck to listen for the call of "doc!" but none came.

Hooper began to mumble and rock and McCoy pressed the bottle into his hands and tried to quiet him.

That night marked their fourteenth in that place, awaiting orders. Two weeks of snow and dirt walls and too little communication from command and they were running out of rations. Two weeks of trench foot and trauma and McCoy was running out of hypos and supplies. Two weeks and their only reinforcements had been a couple dozen Starfleet cadets who had thought they would be exploring the galaxy, not dying on a planet the Federation needed for fuel.

When after a few moments the night was still quiet, Spock looked again to his map and McCoy relaxed next to him. Hooper stopped mumbling and eventually he thanked McCoy and said goodnight to them both and crawled up out of the hole and left them alone.

Next to Spock, McCoy scrubbed at his face, hands noisy against his beard and dry skin. 

"When are we getting out of here, Captain?" he asked, breath pluming in the cold. He pulled his collar up around his ears.

"Imminently," Spock answered, but his throat was dry and he had to repeat himself to be heard.

McCoy cursed, pulled out their canteen and made Spock drink from it. "You're not doing anyone any favors by dying of dehydration," he grumbled. "Anyway, they've been saying that for days."

Spock nodded, drank the water and let McCoy fuss over him, pulling up his collar, making sure Spock's coat was buttoned, then pulled off his own gloves and felt at Spock's ears, gently touching the lobes, the points.

"They're freezing! I told you to keep them covered." McCoy got to his knees and breathed into his hands, rubbed them together, put one of each on Spock's ears, framing his face and Spock allowed it, as McCoy grumbled about goddamn Starfleet sending Vulcans to freezing planets and other favored complaints.

Spock more than allowed it, he sighed and closed his eyes and leaned into one of those warm hands, a thumb rubbing gently at his temple. Through the touch came not only warmth and irritation, but affection, tenderness, and such concern. It was not a slip he would have allowed in front of anyone else.

"Hey," McCoy said softly after a moment, and Spock realized he had almost drifted to sleep. "Imminently, right?" McCoy whispered and somehow, miraculously, he smiled at Spock and then kissed him, lips cold and chapped but his mouth was warm inside, his body warm when Spock pulled him close. 

When McCoy leaned back again he pulled Spock's knitted hat down over Spock's ears and said, "Just wait 'til I get you some place with a nice, warm bed, a great big bathtub and steaming hot water. You'll need cooling down after that."

"That is unlikely, Doctor," Spock said softly and pulled at McCoy again but from somewhere outside of their foxhole, out in the cold night there came a shuffle, and then Hooper scrambled down into their hole once again. He mumbled an apology but McCoy told him just to spit it out.

"It's Clemens. He's running a fever, I think. That leg's pretty hot."

McCoy nodded, put on his gloves and readied his medkit, though there was little left to help.

"I shall come with you," Spock said, getting to his knees, his limbs stiff from the cramped space.

"No you won't," McCoy said and pushed at his chest. "There's nothing you can do and not even much I can do. Clemens should have been taken to the back already, but he's as stubborn as you are."

Spock knelt there, holding onto McCoy's coat. Snow still fell and the night was so dark.

"I'll be fine," McCoy said, and kissed his cheek as Hooper scrambled up and out.

"Stay low, Doctor, and stay silent."

McCoy smiled. "Yes, Captain," he said, then crouched on his feet and shuffled over to the shallowest part of the foxhole. Spock helped him to ground level, then watched the darker shape of him against the night disappear among the black outline of the trees.

When McCoy was gone, Spock sat back down under the tarp and resumed studying the map. It blurred in his vision and his mind went instead to the days, the weeks prior. He missed Jim. A Vulcan should not admit such a thing even to himself but he did. He hated command. He hated keeping the men there under order, he hated watching the doctor struggle to keep them all alive. He did not hate the enemy he fought against. He hated the cold.

He reached up and checked that his hat still covered his ears. The doctor would be furious with him if he returned to find them neglected again. It was that fury which had brought them together, their third night in a foxhole on an especially cold evening and Spock shivering and the doctor cursing about the body temperature of Vulcans as he held Spock close, warmed Spock's hands with his breath, kissed Spock's palms, and when Spock had not complained about that he had kissed his cheeks, his lips, and by dawn they had sweated and cooled again and Spock had pressed his ear to McCoy's chest, listened to the regular, steady beat and fallen asleep there.

There was a clap in the night outside, rifle fire, just one, then nothing. Spock sat a little straighter, very still, and listened, but there was no other sound. He took a breath, looked to his map, and this time tried to concentrate.

Not long after, McCoy returned, sliding slowly into the foxhole, holding his coat tightly around him as he shuffled stiffly, crookedly, toward Spock, snow in his hair, his hat missing.

"Your ears will be cold, Doctor," Spock said to him when he settled close by. The doctor did not respond but his breath was noisy. Perhaps he had become overly chilled. 

Spock put his map and light away and reached out to pull McCoy closer and McCoy came easily, but with a pained sound and a grunt of effort to lay partly over Spock's lap, in the space between Spock's chest and his raised knees and when he looked up at Spock in the yellow light his eyes were full of pain and sorrow and apology.

"You are injured," Spock said, and touched all of McCoy that he could reach, found a wet spot at his thigh. It could have been melted snow but his hand came away red and there was red on McCoy's gloves. "What should I do, Doctor?"

"Nothing," McCoy said, his voice quiet and breathy and too gentle, face already pale. "I bled out quite a bit in the snow already."

Spock ignored him, reached to the juncture of McCoy's thigh to apply pressure on the femoral artery. He tried to move for better access and McCoy cried out.

"Don't bother, goddammit," he said, the last of his energy, and his head lolled and Spock caught it, held it, touched his face, smearing blood on his cheek.

"Please allow me to help you," Spock pleaded, but he could already feel the life slipping out of McCoy, the peculiar force that was the Doctor bleeding out into the snow and the dirt and the frigid air. There were no other medics left, no plasma, no one and nothing to repair or replace what McCoy had already lost.

McCoy settled back against him, fumbling with his gloves, he pulled one off and in the low light he held up something that glinted: his pinky ring.

"You can give this to my daughter," he said, and swallowed thickly, and when Spock touched his hand to take it, there was sorrow, guilt and regret. Spock wanted to tell him that the gesture was unnecessary, that he would live to see her again, but Vulcans were not liars. He took the ring, tucked it into a zippered pocket in his coat.

"I shall do as you ask."

McCoy nodded, jerky and strange, eyelids heavy, and for a moment he went entirely still, but when he opened his eyes again to look up at Spock they shone wetly and he smiled, small and crooked. 

"Tell me about Vulcan again, Mr. Spock," McCoy said. "Tell me how warm it is."

There was something in Spock's throat, something so big he thought he wouldn't be able to speak around it. When his voice sounded past it he was surprised by it. 

"Temperatures can range from thirty-eight degrees centigrade to as high as--"

"No," McCoy said simply, smiling even wider. "No."

Spock smoothed out the doctor's hair, always so neat. He held his hand.

"At dawn the sun shines over the mountain, already warm enough that you would sweat, Doctor."

"Not you..."

"No, not I. When the sun is highest it might burn your cheeks, your nose, but I would advise you to wear a cloth over your head and you would be safe."

"Safe..."

"There is a place in the mountain where ceremonies are held, where lives which began apart are made one. I would take you there, where the rocks are red and hot and the wind so fierce it steals your breath away."

McCoy squeezed his hand weakly. "Marry me..."

"Yes," Spock said.

"Now..."

"If you wish it."

McCoy did not nod and he did not say yes, and from his open eyes ran tears when Spock touched his face, already too cool.

In a little while, Spock leaned down and kissed the doctor, lips cold, and held him until dawn.

In the morning they got the order to move out at last, to retreat, and Spock could have torn the world down with his bare hands and his heartache and filled the sky with the cries he held in his chest, but he only gathered his men and the bodies and did as he was told.

Eight standard weeks later he stood on Joanna McCoy's doorstep, even more grown than Spock had imagined. She invited him in but he declined, and they stood there in the crisp Georgia fall morning and he handed her the ring.

"He wrote me about you," she said, her too-familiar baby blue eyes wet and red. "We had a funeral service for him... there was no body, of course."

"He was buried at space," Spock said.

"I know."

The wind blew cool and fragrant, rustling dry leaves noisily.

"I would like to share..." Spock began to say, "Are you aware that Vulcans are telepaths?"

Joanna nodded. 

"I was with your father at the end. If you would like, I can share some of those moments with you. He thought of you, of course."

Joanna's chin shook and she swallowed deeply and nodded, brave like her father. She took Spock's hand when he offered it.

The wind settled then, with Joanna's hand warm in his, so very warm, as the Doctor's always had been, and the grey sky brightened for just a moment, or perhaps he imagined it. He released her hand.

Joanna smiled and cried at once, and Spock reached out to hold her so that she cried into his shoulder.

"He loved me so much," Joanna said, muffled by Spock's clothing, and when she stood back, eyes red, she said, "he loved both of us."

"And he was loved," Spock said.

She smiled and wiped her eyes. She had slipped the ring onto her third finger, too big to wear on her pinky as her father had. She pulled it off.

"You should have this," she said.

"I cannot. He asked me to give it to you."

"And you have, and I'm giving it to you." She took his hand and he didn't resist when she slipped it onto his pinky, the metal still warm.

"Maybe you could come again. Talk to me about him?" she said and hugged him when he nodded. 

When she stood back, the wind blew stronger, colder, and he hunched into his coat. She reached out and pulled up his collar around his ears and smoothed down his hair. He stared at her wordlessly.

"I'm sorry, I don't know why I did that," she said, a little embarrassed, but she smiled again, and laughed at herself, blue eyes shining.


	8. North Carolina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Genderswapped McCoy. I wrote this with reboot!Spock in mind, but I suppose either Spock works.

EARTH, NORTH CAROLINA, 2260

The road was bumpy and curved and in the back seat of the rented SUV, Joanna McCoy groaned. 

"Okay back there?" her mother asked from the driver's seat.

"Peachy," she said.

"Perhaps it would be safer and less nauseating if you sat upright and buckled your seatbelt," Spock suggested from the passenger seat. Joanna rolled her eyes with all the power of an annoyed thirteen-year-old. Sadly, Spock could not see it with her arm thrown over her face.

"He's right, Jo," her mother said, "the roads are just going to get bumpier. You might end up in the floorboard, or throwing up in it."

"I said I'm okay," Joanna, huffed. "How much longer?"

"Another hour."

"I have to pee."

"There's a station fifteen minutes up the road," her mother said and Joanna peeked out from under her arm to watch the sky fly by through the window. Out in it, a small shape zoomed overhead and she wondered if it was commercial or Starfleet craft, wondered just where the Enterprise was orbiting right now. Spock would know; he would tell her if she asked, but she rolled over to face the back of the seat, bouncing roughly when her mother hit another bump.

At the station, she went in and used the facilities and her mother suggested she pick up something carbonated to help her stomach. She grabbed a bottle of plain water instead. In the car again they sat in the quiet and waited as Spock helped a woman with some sort of car trouble. 

"You want another hypo?" her mother asked, and Joanna couldn't decide which was more annoying, her mother or the Starship CMO. 

"I'm fine."

Her mother turned to her. "Hey, what's with the attitude lately? You've been like this since we got back to Earth."

Joanna ignored her, watched Spock through the window, bent beneath the hood of the woman's car, making some hidden motion with his hands. It was still strange to see him in civilian clothes.

"Is it Spock?" her mother asked. "Is it the wedding? Do you miss the ship? I know it must have felt like home after five years; you practically grew up there."

"He never kisses you," Joanna spat out suddenly, irritated by the questioning. 

Her mother furrowed her brow and looked surprised. "Of course he does."

"I've never seen it, except at the wedding, and even then it was like it was only 'cause he had to."

"What are you talking about, Jo?"

"Joanna," Joanna corrected.

Her mother turned even more in the seat to really look at her in the back. She knew that face. She was pushing too hard. 

"If there's something you need to say you need to say it now, Joanna Kelley."

Joanna sighed and watched Spock, speaking now to the woman, her hood closed and her car running quietly. 

When Joanna was nine or ten she had a hoverscooter and she wasn't allowed to have it outside of the holodeck or the rec rooms but sometimes she'd tear through the hallways of the Enterprise, lieutenants and officers and engineers jumping out of her way, and once someone from security caught her and disabled it. Spock fixed it after she had taken it to him crying, even after he told her that the security guard had acted correctly.

"Does he even love you?" she said at last to her mother. "Have you even, I dunno, asked?"

Her mother laughed, actually laughed at her. She was prettiest when she smiled and that was even more irritating. "Why would you ask me that? Of course he does. He's just private and he doesn't want to make it weird for you. We've talked about it, believe it or not. Adults do that sometimes."

Joanna groaned at her mother's use of the "A" word.

"But if you want us slobbering all over each other in front of you..."

"Gross."

Spock was heading back to them and her mother turned in the seat to face forward.

"You guys used to be such good friends," her mother said, catching her eyes in the rearview. "I wish you would be again, and I know he does too. Don't worry about me, Jo. Trust me, okay?"

Joanna shrugged as the door opened and Spock climbed inside.

"That was nice of you, babe," her mother said and touched Spock's hand, the most contact she usually ever saw between them.

"She was in need of assistance and I was available."

"It was logical then, Commander," her mom said and smiled sappily and Joanna lay back down and hid her face again beneath her arm.

The house in the mountains had belonged to her grandfather and his father before him and so on. Joanna didn't know how old it was, but it was constructed mostly of giant logs, more than was surely ever necessary even when they still built houses out of wood, as if the builder had been proud of just how many trees they'd been able to cut down. She hadn't been there since she was little, six or seven years ago, not long after the divorce, she thought. So when they stood in front of it in the late evening light, the sun just falling behind the trees, it seemed much smaller than it had back then. 

They unpacked the car, luggage and fresh bedding and groceries for the week, and she went upstairs to find her room. She wondered how many people actually took their kids on their honeymoon. Probably just as many as took their kids into deep space.

The house was smelly from being shut up even though a neighbor came in to air it and check the pipes now and then. She opened the windows and turned on the lights and there were a few spiders living in a web in the corner of her room. She thought that Spock would know the species but she didn't ask and she didn't knock them down.

She called her dad, down in Mississippi, took him around the house, showing him each room even though he'd been there plenty of times before. In the kitchen the PADD waved over his mother and Spock preparing dinner and she turned the camera away quickly.

"How's it going with the new guy?" he asked her when she was in her room again.

She shrugged. "It's sort of the opposite of you guys, like how the longer you were together, the more you and mom fought. With Spock, all she used to do was argue, now she just smiles at him all the time.Well most of the time."

Her father frowned. "Do you really remember all the fighting?"

She shrugged.

He looked down at his hands, folded over his desk and a stack of papers there. "Anyway, I meant with you and the new guy. Is he nice enough to you? He'd better be."

She didn't know if nice was the word. She didn't think of Vulcans as 'nice'. Spock had simply always been there. She couldn't say that to her father, though.

"Yeah, he's alright."

After dinner, her mother tried to get them all to play a board game but Joanna said she was reading when in fact she was researching spiders and over her PADD she watched her mother and Spock sitting out on the patio, their chairs pulled close together as they talked. Her mother had a glass of wine and after a while she put her feet into Spock's lap and he placed his hand on her bare skin, rubbing slowly. She went to her room after that.

Joanna woke some time that night to a noise outside her window and couldn't fall back to sleep. Quietly, she crept downstairs and poured herself a glass of water and the door to her mother and Spock's room, when she passed it, was cracked open and she heard low voices. Her mother's giggle she recognized, and a whisper that sounded like "Jo upstairs," and then a shadow moved past the stripe of light beyond the door and the door was pushed shut with a click.

In the morning she woke early and found Spock in the kitchen, sipping tea at the table with his PADD. He was dressed in Starfleet sweats.

"Good morning, Joanna," he said. He always used her full name.

"Mornin'," she said, and yawned. "Mom still in bed?" she asked, even though she knew the answer. 

Spock nodded. 

Joanna stood there for a moment, feeling suddenly uncertain.

"I was about to go for a run," Spock said, and put his PADD into sleep mode. He watched her expectantly.

"I'll get my shoes."

"I shall leave a note for your mother."

Behind the house the ground climbed higher, dense with trees and low vegetation, but there was a trail blanketed in fallen leaves and soft earth and she had climbed it before with her mother and father and even with her grandfather. 

Spock could run farther and faster and longer but he let her set the pace as the sun rose higher, shining through the canopy of trees, dappling the ground. The air was cool, early autumn, and she wondered if he found it too cold.

When they stopped to rest they sat on a fallen tree and she asked him, in Vulcan, if he would outlive her mother.

He said that it was likely. 

She asked if he would outlive her as well.

"Why are you asking this, Joanna?" he said in Standard.

She stared at the ground between her feet, toeing at the dirt.

"If you knew you'd outlive my mother, it wasn't very logical to marry her, was it? Unless you decided the loss was negligible."

He was quiet for a moment, long enough that she looked at him. His brows were pulled together and his brown eyes were hard and he frowned in that stoic Vulcan way of his, so that she almost regretted the question.

"There is not a loss I would feel greater than that of your mother or yourself," he said softly, and she had to look away.

"So why then? Why put yourself through that? Isn't that against all logic?"

"Love is not logical," he said. "Is that your real question, Joanna? Am I capable of that emotion?"

She shrugged, dug a rock out of the dirt and rubbed it clean. "I guess that's none of my business."

"On the contrary," Spock said, "when I asked your mother to marry me--"

Joanna looked at him suddenly, sharply.

"Did you think your mother asked me?" he said at her look.

"Honestly, I figured she _told_ you that you were going to marry her."

He smiled, so rare it made her laugh.

"When I asked your mother to marry me," he said but paused again and when he continued it was in Vulcan, "she said that I could not love her unless I loved you both."

Joanna watched the ground, her face suddenly hot. She threw the rock into the bushes, flushing out a bird.

In Vulcan she said that it definitely sounded like something her mom would say, but she did not acknowledge what it meant and Spock said nothing else about it, though he did say that her Vulcan was rusty, and she had clearly not been practicing.

On the way back down she ran out ahead of him and at the house her mother was still in bed. They made breakfast and Joanna made coffee the way her mother liked it and it was the smell of that which finally got her mom up and around, shuffling into the kitchen to lean down and kiss Joanna's and then Spock's cheek. 

"You guys have been busy," she said and Joanna just shrugged and stood to leave her mother and Spock alone but before she left she turned.

"I've got some spiders in my room, Spock," Joanna said. "When you get a chance, could you help me identify them?"

He raised a brow and her mother smiled and Spock said, "Certainly."


	9. Savannah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follows first chapter. TOS universe.

EARTH, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

It was pouring when they returned from dinner. They were so wet that they dripped on the gorgeous old wood floor of the Bed and Breakfast and the kind young man who ran it followed after them as far as their room to mop up the water as they apologized.

Spock had the key and opened their room. They had already been there and settled in and had walked to dinner. Then the sky had opened up.

"What were you saying about borrowing trouble by bringing our raincoats?" Spock asked as they stood on the tiles in the bathroom, shucking off their dripping clothing.

"Oh, can it," McCoy said, shivering. He threw his clothes into the bathtub and stood naked, drying his hair while Spock rung out his clothes and dutifully hung them on the shower rod to dry.

"Leave that 'til later, babe," McCoy said and threw the towel over Spock's head, trying to dry his hair as well.

Spock took the towel from him and pulled it off of his head and frowned, his hair sticking out in every direction.

"They will not dry, Leonard," he said.

"Well I guess I don't give a damn," McCoy said, and padded out into the bedroom. The room was freezing and the spring rain had been cold. He turned off the air conditioning, pulled back the blankets and crawled beneath them.

"Get your ass in here and warm me up, Spock," he called, and wondered belatedly how thick the walls were.

A few moments later, after Spock must have hung McCoy's clothes as well, Spock came into the room naked and began searching for a pair of underpants.

"Don't bother," McCoy said, patting the bed.

Spock was even colder than McCoy when he crawled in bed and McCoy wrapped himself and the blankets around him and shivered against him, chest to his back, holding him with one arm, the other folded between them. Sometimes there were just too many limbs for cuddling.

He rubbed Spock's shoulder, his chest, still damp, kissed his neck, his wet hair, combing it down with his fingers. Then Spock caught his hand and held it. 

"I cannot tell if you are mothering me, doctoring me, or trying to arouse me," Spock said.

"Why not all three at once?" McCoy asked, wiggling closer, but he let Spock hold his hand and soon they grew warm beneath the covers. McCoy wasn't sleepy at all. He'd slept most of the shuttle ride and with the time difference it was still early for them. Also, now that they were so cozy, he was a little aroused himself, but Spock's breathing had evened out and after a while he slept, McCoy's hand still clutched in his.

McCoy rested his head just behind Spock's, nose in his neck and breathed in the smell of him, of rain-damp hair and skin and the Vulcan cologne he wore which he said was traditional or ceremonial. Whatever it was it drove McCoy wild. 

He smiled and held his husband.

The movement or all that foolish human emotionalism must have woken Spock just enough because he squeezed McCoy's hand and McCoy felt a rush of affection and warmth that had nothing to do with body temperature.

"Love you, too," he whispered, and reached over Spock to the bedside lamp to turn out the light, and even though the day was still dimly lit outside, they did not get out of bed again until morning.


End file.
